Friday, September 19, 2014

Perfect to a Fault

Last time I
talked about how most games can be at least partially broken by exceptionally
smart players. And although it may seem that it is the geniuses game designers
should aim to please the most, the truth is that they are not the biggest
threat to how we perceive games. On the contrary, it is the idiots that should
be feared.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

Let me
start by saying that I really do not mean to offend anyone – at least not without
offending myself as well. The truth is each of us may become a boardgaming idiot
from time to time due to various circumstances. In my case, I managed to come
through as a complete dumbbell during my first game of Agricola.

It was a
few years ago, during a convention, right in the middle of a graveyard shift I
was assigned to staff the games room. We started the game around 4.30 and by
the time it came to an end, roughly three quarters of my brain bailed on me,
deciding that whatever usually governs breathing can hold the fort, while all
the other little grey cells will go to sleep. Thus, it should come as no
surprise that I scored way below zero, with a single pasture, three bags of
wheat and a (probably extremely underfed) pig to show for all my heroic
struggles.

I do not
remember all of the mistakes I made, but I can easily recall the guy who taught
me the game, as he gazed at me triumphantly, counting his precious points,
thinking that I was probably somebody’s brother, who (by the looks of him) is a
drummer in a thrash metal band nobody listens to, duped into doing a job no
sane convention attendee would ever want to just do out of their own volition.
So, in short, I was the designated idiot for that game.

So, you're the idiot that ruined that other guy's game.

The real
problem with us idiots is that we are also able to break a game – as I clearly
broke Agricola for one other player at the table on that faithful night. My
erratic movements made it impossible for him to form a consistent strategy and
between me doing random things and the game teacher performing at the peak of
his abilities, that other player felt that the game structure gave him no
chance to do anything significant, thus deeming it vastly underwhelming, if not
outright broken.

All of that
meant that by performing erratically, making really silly moves, doing what no
intelligent player would ever do I transformed the game (for one player) into
an excruciating experience, either by testing the mechanisms until they finally
give way, or by making the game underperform severely due to my inconsistency
and counter productiveness. And although it should be easy to differentiate
between an experience of suffering through a game diminished by poor player decisions,
and a broken design, the reality is that often it simply is not. And I am
pretty certain of that, being a few times on the business end of such an
unpleasant experience.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

This is
exactly what happened to me with Mag*Blast, a light card game about shooting
lasers and making silly noises, right after it was played with two people who
decided to make it a full on strategy game, killing the fun for everyone else
and proving that there was one clear way of winning the game. A similar thing
happened to my wife, as she played Garden Dice with someone who decided to adapt
a strategy as aggressive as humanly possible, which meant that, while having no
chance at achieving victory, he made the whole game a painful slog for everyone
else at the table.

Now, I
would lie if I said that there is no space between the idiots and the geniuses.
There is and most of us actually inhabit it on a daily basis. It is full of people
smart enough to understand and play board games proficiently, but either not
quite as bright as the brightest, or just never bothered to calculate and
optimize everything, choosing to go with their gut for the sake of what they
perceive as fun. And it is this exact group most designs should probably be
aimed at.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

Now, don’t
get me wrong, I am not saying that dumbing down is the way to go, as this is
not what gamers expect and, for obvious reasons, appreciate. What I am saying
is that a game should strive to be fun even if not all moves are optimized,
because it will mostly work in an imperfect environment. It will never be
idiot-proof, as destroying a game is sometimes as simple as swapping the original
objectives for a set of few arbitrary ones (like becoming “the master of all wizards”
in Lords of Waterdeep, or deciding to never trade in Settlers of Catan) or just
being dead tired. But a design should be able to withstand some sub-optimal
play without immediately handing over the victory to whoever uses a strategy
that can be countered only with a very specific response, executed flawlessly
and perfectly timed.

Image source: BoardGameGeek

What I am
also not saying is that games for the exceptionally smart should be immediately
discarded. However, we need to remember that they have a tendency to be
misjudged by gamers not willing to delve deep enough. A prime example of such a
misunderstood game is The Great Zimbabwe, which has an amusing feature of
becoming longer with every subsequent play. The first games will usually be surprisingly
short, won by a player who manages to seemingly break the game by introducing a
strategy that seems unbeatable. That might earn the game a “broken” status
right out of the gate and move it from the shelf to the trade pile, without
giving it a second chance.

It is only
later that players discover that there is a counter for every possible approach
and that the first victories are usually a matter of other players’ negligence
rather than anyone’s superior performance. But that requires everyone to be
willing to play The Great Zimbabwe again, and that, as my own experience
clearly indicates, is by far not a given.

So what
should a designer do in order to make a game that would satisfy the most
people? In a perfect world, he or she should aim at the brightest, hoping the
rest will see how solid their design really is. In the real world, aiming for
the smartest gamer should also be acknowledged, just as much as remembering that
a game should be attractive to all others – even some of the idiots. After all,
we learn, we become smarter, we sleep off the wear and tear of pulling an
all-nighter at a convention or we are told to stop acting like a jerk – and we
become the masters of the games we enjoy the most. But for this to happen, we
also need a chance to enjoy the game right from the start, even if we err on
our way.